Going Green – The time is now

I spent the early part of the summer this year in Houston Texas and I can tell you the most surprising thing to me was the weather. Let me explain why, my previous trips to Houston were during the fall and winter periods, therefore the weather ranged from cool to really cold. However, I was in for a rude shock when I arrived at the George Bush International airport in late June at about 7pm and the temperature was so high  (as much as 104 degrees Fahrenheit). I mean I know the US has some really extreme weather conditions but this intense heat and drought  Houston was experiencing drove home the fact that the usual extreme weather conditions in the US were becoming even more severe.

My first thought was “Going green”, global warming and how the effect of our highly industrialised nations was definitely a major factor in the numerous cases of natural disasters around the world, for example the Hurricanes and Typhoons in the US, Mudslides in parts of Asia, floods in various parts of the world as well as the more recent oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico, Earthquake in Haiti, Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami in Japan.

Going green” is the phrase referring to corporate and individual action consciously taken to curb the harmful effects on the environment through consumer habits and lifestyles (Available from: http://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/challenges-and-benefits-of-going-green-in-nigeria/2528/ assessed 25 August 2011).

For a long time now many environmental fundamentalists and advocacy organizations   have talked, written and even protested against the world’s insatiable appetite for energy. We see many influential people and celebrities towing the green line such as former US presidential candidate Al Gore and numerous actors such as Leonardo di Caprio, George Clooney and Cameron  Diaz to mention a few have either produced documentaries and/or purchased green cars

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 The most common sources of energy being used are fossil fuels and nuclear energy which cause issues related to greenhouse gases and toxic waste accumulation...

Environmental awareness is now gaining grounds around the world especially in developed nations, however  there is still a lot of ground to cover especially on the African continent.

For example in a country like Nigeria going green is a significant challenge due to the inefficiencies in the energy and transportation sectors as well as the absence of recycling operations.  Nigerians burn gallons and gallons of gas daily in generating electricity and transportation from one place to another. There is also the issue of the allegations of environmental pollution against the big oil producers in Nigeria, which locals claim have affected their livelihood. For these reasons many countries, Nigeria inclusive have environmental organisations such as the Nigeria Energy commission and laws and acts in place to monitor the environment such as the Environmental Impact Assessment Decree  No 86 of 1992 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria . But can these organizations and laws be fully effective? Not very much since the governments of these African nations need to take steps by investing in alternative forms of energy and encourage “Going Green”.

 If every country can build awareness and educate its citizens on the effect our actions have on our planet and the available alternatives while passing and implementing environmental laws ,  I believe we can begin to build and restore our planet to its Green Glory. The time is now.

References

http://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/challenges-and-benefits-of-going-green-in-nigeria/2528/

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2011/03/japans-crisis-is-another-reason-to-look-at-energy-use/?gclid=CP_Z5cHqkKsCFeomtAodHFNRvQ

http://www.tmz.com/2006/08/17/clooney-rides-the-green-lightning/

Technology - Would we ever catch up?

I remember the first time I became interested in blogging, it was after watching the movie Julie and Julia in 2009 which was about a young lady called Julia Powell who aspired to make all renowned chef Julia Child’s 524 recipes in 365 days. She did this from her tiny apartment in New York and blogged about it on a daily basis, which later led to so many hits a movie was made about it. Now why did I bring this up? A couple of young professionals of whom I am one had an argument a few days ago about the level of technological development and awareness in my country Nigeria and I was of the opinion that we were still quite technologically illiterate and to back up my argument I brought up the example of our exposure to web 2.0 and the story of Julie and Julia and how blogging was quite alien to most of our country’s population. Now just to be clear, people did know about blogging, podcasts etc. but very few especially when you look at a country with a population of over 120 million people.  I did win the argument but it was one of those arguments you really wish you lost, because it would be so much better to have been wrong.

Now this brings us to the subject and begs the question, would we ever catch up to the technology of our generation? What needs to be done? Why is this so important?

So would we ever catch up? In my opinion if we continue with the current mode of operations, doing the same thing over and over, then there is really no hope of catching up with other world economies in all aspects including new technology and all its advantages.

What needs to be done? Create awareness and make technology available at all levels of education and government parastatals. Right now you find up to date technology in mostly expensive private schools and the standard public school student only knows how to check his/her email at public internet cafes and might not even have personal PC’s.  There are some government parastatals where there are very few computers and/or computer literate individuals, this needs to be changed and more people need to get this training.

Why is this important? To say this is important is an understatement. In my opinion technology especially the internet/web 2.0 is the future. Everything now seems to be in virtual environment even jobs. People can work from their homes and earn a living. Products and services are marketed on the internet and deals are also made and executed online. Traditional letter writing practically extinct and almost all forms of communication is via the internet.  Every day there are new improved technology being developed and rolled out and developed and some developing countries do keep up, if we do not try to close the gap immediately, it’ll keep growing and we would be left playing catch up for a long time to come. Albert Einstein did define insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (Available from:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html assessed 25 August 2011).

References

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_%26_Julia

New Technology

Without doubt technology has completely changed the entire existence of our society and all parts of mankind’s being are now affected by one form of technology or the other. Even in some remote parts of the world there is some technological influence or the other. For example, in my country there are some really remote villages where the main occupation is cattle rearing and to my utmost surprise I learnt that they have access to mobile phones irrespective of the fact that they live in mud huts. They use these phones to keep in touch with cattle buyers from the city that purchase their cattle.

New media marketing is practically dependent on the new era of technology, which has changed marketing and is set to change even more in the coming future. There are an estimated 1.2 billion people online and this number is expected to explode as groups bring Wi-Fi to third world countries Carter, Sandy (2008). Now imagine the potential of these untapped markets especially in Africa where I come from, absolutely a marketer’s advantage to capture this market as this would hopefully improve the group or companies market share and ultimately might increase its sales and profit maximization. This is especially as existing markets in developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom represent a saturated market segment.

Further new technology would see companies further seek to improve their level and would require extensive use of the technology available to them and would result in them seeking new cutting edge technology ahead of competitors to achieve first mover advantages.

New technology has caused a shift in the traditional B2C and B2B market type and introduced a P2P marketing type which would continue to be evident in the future of marketing.

New technology would enable an organisation “scream” in the work place (Carter S 2008), it would be become obvious in the evolution from  mostly  B2B marketing to people to people (Carter S, 2008).As Dale Kutnick says, as the twenty first century unfolds a growing emphasis on Biz and Consumer oriented services for all products will be key commercial drivers”

A shift and change in technology would result in changes in the abilities and credentials of the standard marketer/marketing executive as they would need to possess skills that would enable optimal usage of technology and the new web 2.0. For example, marketers would need to be able to know how to use blogs, podcasts, twitter etc. to effectively take advantage of the marketplace. (Carter S. 2008) stated that “technology itself is allowing us to collect data at an ever more granular and precise level”. New technology is any prepared marketer’s dream come through, however organisations that fail to adapt to this change would be at a marketing dis-advantage as more and more P2P marketing is done via social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and Flickr.

References

New language of Marketing 2:0 How to use ANGELS to energise your marketing (Sandy carter, 2008)IBM press

Manchester Business School, New Media Marketing, [MBS] 2011.

            

Attention Poverty

The first time I saw the term attention poverty, I thought it had something to do with some NGO and its poverty alleviation efforts. I crave your indulgence as being from Africa poverty is a sensitive problem which we encounter quite often. Now I know that attention poverty can be better understood in relation to attention economics which sees human attention as a scarce commodity which is needless to say quite difficult to obtain. Attention in itself refers to the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things ( Available from: Wikipedia assessed 25 August 2011)

One of the main concerns of most marketing teams is to capture consumer attention and convert possible or non-customers into regular and loyal customers. Attention poverty creates a problem of managing information in such a way that customers and consumers are able to absolve this information easily and thus maintain their attention span. This is what marketing hopes to achieve.

In order to manage the information as best as they can under the circumstances. The marketer needs to engage the customers and hold or maintain their attention as long as is possible to retain them and achieve all possible benefits such as word of mouth advertising (such as product or service reviews).

 There is a wealth of information in the world and the existence if new media means the information available is not just in abundance but also very much available to a large segment of the world’s population which is online. This wealth of information needs to be assimilated by its recipients thus creating a scarcity of attention that can consume this amount of information that is available. This scarcity is attention poverty and every organisation needs to come up with innovative ways and means of effectively ensuring information provided maintains the attention of its recipients.

Organisations are constantly faced with the challenge of attention poverty and they tend to tackle this mainly through the use of advertising campaigns which are tailored to arrest the consumers attention immediately and hopefully keep it for as long as possible at least up until the next campaign comes along. Recently, an advert that caught my attention was one for the axe body spray which showed angels falling (literally) to the scent of the new Axe deodorant (Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtjfaCKRNFo assessed 25 August 2011). Now this is a male product and ideally I won’t even notice it not to talk of paying it any attention or remembering it but the advertisement was successful in capturing my attention and what this means is if for any reason at all I need to buy a deodorant for a male or recommend it to one, I’ll probably go with this cause it’ll would most likely be the most memorable.

Attention poverty therefore results in a need for significant advertisements and interaction between the organisation and/or marketer and the customer or consumer. If this is not addressed it might lead to a loss in market share possibilities.

I like to think of customers in terms of children it’s difficult to capture their attention and even more so to hold their attention long enough. A company which manages its attention poverty is likely to have excellent marketing results

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/attention economic

New Media Marketing Personalised Marketing

I’m of the opinion that more often than not individuals want to feel a connection with whom or what they come in contact or interact with. People like to feel that they don’t need to look too far or hard to get something that seems tailor made to their needs. Personalized marketing to a great extent satisfies this feeling; it provides a form of one to one marketing for potential and existing customers. Personalized marketing can be said to be marketing of a unique product for each customer.

Personalized marketing has existed in various forms of media for a long time however it has become even more common and pronounced in online media and mobile communications. Many companies use online communication tools, social networking sites and emails to obtain and retain customer information for use in creating unique product offerings suited to the individual customer. Personalized marketing can also be referred to as one to one marketing which is made up of four steps in order to be effective. These are: identify, differentiate, interact and customize.    

The importance of personalization in marketing cannot be overemphasised, knowing what the customer wants can save a company or organisation from putting out products that might not be well received. Information gathered on possible customers and their wants can aid the company compute more accurate sales projections and finally the interaction with customers encourages brand loyalty and promotes word of mouth marketing especially on social websites like Facebook. In his blog post on January 24, 2011, Barry Byers categorically stated that “it is the age of personalized marketing, especially digital marketing”. His statement alludes to the fact that personalized marketing is of extreme importance to all marketers. “The Internet has made it easier than ever for brands to know who people are, what they like, what they don't, and how they want to be communicated with “(Chris Lee, New media Knowledge, July 2011)

Some common examples of personalized marketing in organisations can be seen with Dell computers which has the option to interact with an agent online as well as personalize your computer by customizing it according to your taste. Some organisations like the Bank of America have online surveys which pop up after you have interacted with the online agent.

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·         Great financing deals

·         Personalize your Studio laptop

However, one of the more interesting and quite subtle information gathering by an organisation can be seen in such supermarket chains like Tesco which offers its customers a club card which is meant to reward customers with points for each purchase that can be redeemed on future purchases but also serve as a means of tracking customer purchasing preferences and can form an excellent database to market what the customer wants and needs.

Organisations such as Tesco and Dell utilized one-to-one marketing by first of all identifying the customer’s preferences, details and information as entered into the customer’s account. Then they differentiate and distinguish the customers into segments, interact with the customer and finally customize and personalize the products or offerings.

There are however some limitations and disadvantages to personalized marketing as customer  tastes and trends are dynamic and change very frequently but the pros definitely exceed the cons and that why personalized marketing has come to stay....... at least till the next big thing comes up.

References

Manchester Business School, New Media Marketing, [MBS] 2011.

http://www.wolf21.com/blog/personaliztion-online-marketing/

http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2011/7/25/how-to-personalise-online-marketing-strategies

http://www.tesco.com/

http://www.dell.com/us/p/studio-n-studio-xps-laptops

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalized_marketing